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Teruaki Kubota
Teruaki Kubota, known as the 9th Man by the other players, was one of the more elusive characters in Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, as he became the first victim of the Nonary Game very early on. In entering Door [5] alone (which he achieved by betraying the other players) he violated Zero's rules, hence activating the small bomb laying in his intestine and resulting in his gruesome death. Appearance Kubota had a very scholarly appearance. During the Nonary Game, he wore a pink undershirt with a beige and black waistcoat and a red necktie. He had forest-green pants to go with his purple and white socks that stand out from his black shoes. He also had peculiar black, frizzy hair, which Junpei said resembled a bird's nest. He wore the bracelet with the number 9 on his left hand. In an old photograph that showed him as a scientist at Cradle Pharmaceutical, he wore a white lab coat over his usual attire and also appeared to have a mullet. Personality Kubota was very quiet and reserved. Junpei remarked that Kubota "had only a fingertip's-worth of a grip on his sanity." He was quiet until his heist and doesn't speak much at all until he began ordering everyone around. He was apparently easy to manipulate and had trusted Gentarou Hongou as seen by Hongou's confession of why he killed Kubota. He was also extremely capable in machinery and mechanics as seen by the RED and DEAD devices he had developed for the Nonary Game and his position in Cradle Pharmaceutical. Background During the First Nonary Game, Kubota was one of the four executives of Cradle Pharmaceutical and part of the creation of the Nonary Project, also known as the First Nonary Game. The First Nonary Game's purpose was to see if they can control a human mind through sheer will. He created the necessary technology required for the Nonary Game. As the supervisor of the R&D department, he was the creator of the RED and DEAD devices used to open the numbered doors and conducted the actual experiments to test them. He also created the numbered bracelets worn by players in the First Nonary Game since the bracelets were needed to open the numbered doors because of the concept of digital roots involved. ''Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors'' Nine years after the events of the First Nonary Game, Kubota found himself kidnapped by a person wearing a gas mask and was forced to participate in the Nonary Game himself. He was presumably stuck in a room similar to the 3rd class cabin and had escaped. Kubota soon met seven of his fellow players for the first time and ran towards the central staircase with Hazuki Kashiwabara (known as Lotus), Aoi Kurashiki (known as Santa), and Seven but happened to encounter Junpei. When he and Seven approached Junpei, Kubota said nothing and ran past him to two numbered doors. A few minutes later, Kubota and the other players were greeted by Zero via speaker and were explained the main purpose of the game and their time limit of nine hours. While they were examining the central staircase, he revealed himself to Hongou, who went under the codename Ace later on. Hongou said that the DEAD only required one person to scan their bracelet, and ordered him to investigate what was beyond Door 5 so they would meet again later. However, it was really a trick to let Kubota unknowingly kill himself, since Hongou saw Kubota both as a threat and his bracelet being a very potent weapon as the number 9 had the ability to not change the digital root of a group when added. Kubota was also used to see if the Nonary Game was what Hongou called "a poor attempt of a joke." When approached by Clover to see what his number was, Kubota said that since they know who 1-8 were and that he was the only one left, he showed his bracelet that displayed a 9. When Clover asked what his codename was, he told her he didn't need one since he had a plan. Clover soon asked him what his plan was and Kubota asked her if she really wanted to know. She answered yes and Kubota immediately held her by knife point and began ordering everybody around, saying that he won't hesitate to kill Clover since all he needed was her bracelet. By this point, everybody had started calling him the 9th Man. After Kubota demanded that Hongou and Clover put their left hand on the RED, he proceeded to do the same and released Clover as he promised. With a smirk, he said that he will see what was in Door 5 but before they could do anything to stop him, Door 5 had already closed. When Kubota tried to authenticate on the DEAD, he realized that Ace had lied to him. He started pounding on the door and begged the other eight players to get him out of there. When they were unable to, he took his last seconds to try to tell them that Hongou killed him. However, Hongou's identity was not revealed due to Kubota's panicking and he ultimately met his pitiful death. After he had died from the bomb inside him, Junpei authenticated with two other people to form the digital root of 5 to find out what happened to Kubota. The eight players were horrified at the sight of his cadaver, especially Akane Kurashiki, who went under the codename June. Akane had became feverish and soon, she cried after wondering why did Kubota had to die. After Light, who went under the codename Snake, finished reading the rules of the Nonary Game to the rest of the players, everyone started deciding on which door they would pick. Kubota's death was used as an excuse by Lotus and Santa to choose Door [4] instead and the reason why Junpei decided to enter Door 4 along with Akane. As Hongou, Seven, Clover, and Snake entered Door 5 to go through the 1st class cabin, Snake's blindness prevented him to look at the remains of Kubota's explosion while the others reacted differently. Later, at the large hospital room past Door 4 and Door 5, the players met up again and became happy at their reunion. Junpei figured that Kubota's death was the reason as they were happy that they were still alive, unlike Kubota, whom Junpei felt sorry for. They soon noticed that the components of the RED for Door [3], Door [7], and Door [8], were missing so the eight players decided to split up and search the areas they can access. During that time, Hongou decided to go back to the 1st class cabin and went outside towards Kubota's remains. He successfully acquired the number 9 bracelet, which was right near Kubota's broken glasses. Hongou also found the knife that Kubota used to hold Clover at knifepoint. Hongou quickly went back to the area he was supposed to patrol but encountered Nagisa Nijisaki, who was going towards the large hospital room. Hongou didn't recognize Nijisaki due to his prosopagnosia. He noticed that Nijisaki was wearing Snake's clothes so Hongou mistakenly recognized Nijisaki as Snake. When Nijisaki went towards Door 3, Hongou calls out Light's codename, with no response from Nijisaki. Hongou thought that Snake was blind so he didn't recognize him or that Snake was conspiring with Zero so Hongou used Kubota's numbered bracelet as the murder weapon to kill Nijisaki. Hongou used Kubota's, Nijisaki's, and his own bracelet to form the digital root of 3 and to open the numbered door. Hongou quickly pushed Nijisaki inside Door 3, with Nijisaki wandering towards the shower room and soon meeting the same, gory fate as Kubota. In the library, Snake, who had been trapped in the coffin of the chapel as part of the ploy of Nijisaki's murder, secretly told Junpei, as he didn't want Seven and Clover to find out, the truth about the First Nonary Game conducted by Cradle Pharmaceutical and its four executives, one of them being the deceased Kubota, who was in charge of the company's research and development division and developed the technology required for the experiment. In the study, Kubota's identity was finally revealed in the photograph showing a scene of him and the other three Cradle Pharmaceutical executives commemorating the hopes of the Nonary Project succeeding in their favor. Although the four players had no recollection of meeting all four executives, Junpei felt that someone had secretly told him the identities of the executives already. Junpei soon realized that the body inside the shower room was Nijisaki (previously nicknamed Guy X or Mr. X by the players) and that three of the executives who were part of the creation of the First Nonary Game were murdered. At the incinerator past the study, the four of them met up with Santa, Akane, Hongou, and Lotus again. Junpei wondered where the gun Santa used to force his group to enter the other Door 9, with Hongou revealing that he had the gun and used it to make Lotus his hostage. When Hongou tried to open Door q in the incinerator with his own bracelet, Lotus's, and Kubota's to form the digital root of 9 and open the numbered door, the RED did not authenticate and Hongou was surprised by this result. He tried multiple times to open the door so he had left his guard down, allowing Seven to attack Hongou. Junpei then revealed to the weakened Hongou how he had killed Kubota, Nijisaki, and Musashidou. Trivia *Kubota's hand is never seen pressing against the RED's scanner in the final version of the game, although such a scene does appear in the trailer, along with the similar ones for the other players. *The first syllable of Kubota is a Japanese homonym of the number 9 and the letter q. *While alive, the textbox that appears when he speaks always displays his name as "???", despite Junpei seemingly giving him the initial nickname of "bird's nest". By contrast, all the other players (with the exception of Lotus' opening lines), are identified by their initial nicknames (Lion, Prince, Silver, etc) until the codenames are agreed upon. Later flashbacks do however identify Kubota as "9th Man" when he speaks. *In both the Japanese and American character ranking polls, Kubota is #9, hence making him the least popular character. *Kubota is Kinu Nishimura's, the character's designer, favorite character. *In ''Virtue's Last Reward'''s Secret Archives, on the "Nonary Veterans" file, it mentions his appearance in the Second Nonary Game and that he gets blown up. *In the 999 Q&A, Uchikoshi says that if Kubota would have had a codename, it would have been "Pigeon" (Pigeon is "9" in kanji.) http://www.aksysgames.com/999/answers Gallery 9th_Man_(1).png|Kubota strained. 9th_Man_(2).png|Kubota neutral. 9thManPast.jpg|Teruaki Kubota of the past. 9thmanartbook2.jpg|Concept art. Category:Characters Category:Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors characters Category:Male characters Category:Deceased characters Category:Second Nonary Game players Category:Featured articles